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This is what the Pittsburgh Post Gazette had to say:

Quote:Hopes rising for unifying Orthodoxy'sU.S. churches

America's Orthodox Christians, divided fordecades among about 10 churches based on Greek or Serb or other ancestry, soonmay be moving toward the formation of a united American Orthodox church.

Many of them have dreamed of that for decades, especially as conversionsto Orthodoxy have skyrocketed. But most church patriarchs have squelched suchtalk.

Now it appears that the patriarchs are not only supporting butdemanding some sort of unity. To explore what this may mean for believers in theUnited States, the independent, pan-Orthodox group Orthodox Christian Laity willgather for three days, starting Thursday, at Antiochian Village in Ligonier.

In 1994 that retreat center hosted the first and only gathering of allOrthodox bishops in North America. Believing they had approval from churchpatriarchs overseas, those bishops called for a united church in which thefaithful would not be treated as "scattered children" of ancestral homelands.

But the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople -- the spiritual head ofglobal Orthodoxy -- denounced it as a rebellion against the ancient church andreplaced the Greek archbishop who had led it. The unity movement lay dormant for15 years.

Then, in June, the 14 Old World patriarchs gathered inChambesy, Switzerland, and declared that all Orthodox bishops outside oftraditional Orthodox lands -- including North America -- will begin meeting toaddress their own issues in their own lands.

This week's lay conferencewill examine what it may take to achieve unity. There are significant questionsabout how ethnic traditions will continue to be honored and whether laity willhave as much of a voice in a unified church as they have in some of the smallerones.

The patriarchs "are asking the Orthodox Christians in theso-called lands beyond the ancient world to show that they can create a unified,multicultural church in their land. That's a very dramatic development," saidGeorge Matsoukas, executive director of Orthodox Christian Laity. The firstmeeting of American bishops is set for May.

The keynote speaker atLigonier will be Metropolitan Jonah, leader of the Orthodox Church in America, aself-governing offshoot of the Russian Orthodox Church. Although it is one ofthe most Americanized bodies -- and he is a Chicago-born convert -- itpotentially has much to lose in the formation of a new American church.

Orthodoxy is the Eastern wing of an ancient church that split into theOrthodox and Catholic churches in 1054 in a dispute over papal authority. Itsecumenical patriarch in Constantinople -- modern-day Istanbul, Turkey -- has noauthority over the other patriarchs, but is "first among equals." He has directauthority over the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, which is atleast 100 times the size of his flock in Turkey.

The Russian OrthodoxChurch began sending missionaries across the Bering Sea to Alaska before theAmerican Revolution, and originally had jurisdiction over North America.

But after the Russian church was crippled by the 1917 communistrevolution, many Orthodox bodies worldwide created a jumble of overlappingethnic mission dioceses in North America. This violates church law, whichdictates one bishop per city; Pittsburgh has several.

The June meetingin Switzerland was part of decades-long preparations for the first Great Councilof Orthodox bishops since 787, which is expected to untangle the Americanhodge-podge.